Carrier route record
DLDEN→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Denver to New York
- Flights
- 1,033
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DEN to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,033 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,021 at 73.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on DEN to LGA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 967 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.3%
Every carrier on DEN to LGA, 4,664 flights
These figures cover 1,033 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DEN to LGA
Delta flew 1,033 of the 4,664 flights on DEN to LGA, about 22% of it. Its 79.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.7% to Southwest at 63.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 73.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 63.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,517 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,033 | 79.7% | 83 min | 4.84% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,021 | 73.5% | 74 min | 1.78% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 93 | 65.6% | 93 min | 3.23% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,517 | 63.0% | 59 min | 3.10% | D− |
Southwest Airlines cancels 3.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DEN to LGA
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am353 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am11 flights—
- 11am–2pm363 flights81.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm306 flights69.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.5% of the time, against 69.5% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DEN to LGA through the year
June is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 19 points below January, the best at 89.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DEN to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on DEN to LGA often beats the schedule: 375 of 967 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 196 late arrivals split 59 under half an hour, 59 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 78 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early375 flights38.8%
- Within 15 min396 flights41.0%
- 15–29 min late59 flights6.1%
- 30–59 min late59 flights6.1%
- 1–2 hours late46 flights4.8%
- 2+ hours late32 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 967 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
39 of 198 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 37 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DEN to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 July 2026, 14 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 July 2026 | 14 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 June 2026 | 11 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 March 2026 | 7 hours 49 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 16 January 2026 | 6 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 July 2026 | 6 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,319 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,181 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.84%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,620 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.7% on time across 1,033 flights, 9 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,033 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on DEN to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 967 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to LGA73.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to LGA63.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.